


when the cold wind blows

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Answer to an old asoiaf kinkmeme prompt, Eldritch Starks, House Stark, Starks are descendants of the white walkers, eventually it shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:07:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7593988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a tale, and it went like this:</p><p>There was once a Stark brother, a Black Brother of the white Wall, that took a White Walker to wife, and from their union they begot children of night and ice. Their children's children children hold their legacy in their bones, to be remembered when the great night covers the sky.</p><p>And they shall be champions of the night, and ice their weapons and shadow their shields, and all shall tremble at their cold winter might.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the cold wind blows

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: violent uses of magic, death, mentions of cannibalism, mind control. Regular asoiaf stuff.

 

 

_**V** _

_the dark walker_

 

 

There are many ways to steal, and No One is proficient in all of them. Means and possessions are the easiest, taken with sharp words or sharper steel, but she has little use for them these days. The kind of food that appeals to her is not sold in markets, and she never cared much for clothing.

This is what her teachers forgot: a wolf in every pelt is a wolf still.

The face thieves taught her much and well, though none suspected how far she had surpassed them. Flesh is easy to take, breathing bodies and warm blood cast in another's perfect likeness. Identities are made of so much more than faces. Minds are, after all, so very easy to break. Like bones, like eggs, and they spill yoke so prettily through the cracks. No One laps at the thoughts, the memories and feelings and beings and makes them her own.

It does not sate her hunger. Nothing ever does.

The darkness helped. First her fingertips, then her toes, it comes from the dark corners of a temple, the dim underbelly or a bridge, and curl around her, sink. Perhaps it was always there, waiting to breach the surface. Skin and flesh and bone turn to dark weightlessness, a little more from moonless night to moonless night. She turns into fleeting shadow, face to mind to face, colder everytime. Returning to her own face becomes harder, harder still to recognize the glowing blue eyes reflected on the canals.Perhaps she was always like that and this was her true face all along, hidden by the summer sun.

Somewhere between one face and another her own flesh became meaningless, blood and bone and muscle and soul turned to light-eating shadows.

She hides it, at first, but winter has set its heels on Braavos and the colder it gets the hungrier she becomes. It not in her stomach, this ache. It only abates when she's well fed, fat on life taken. The richer the food the better and the more she covets it. She had not planned on it, but It is not so surprising to find herself pressing her lips to the Waif's and gorging herself on her life. Her limbs become stronger, faster, paler and darker.

They took her name and things and almost took her needle, and for that No One slinks into the misty shadows of the House of White and Black and hunts the hunters of the night.

When she comes to the Kindly Man, deep into the holy sanctum, he asks her who she is. He is not the first to do so, but he is the last left alive. But he took her in and taught her much, so No One allows her body to find its shape again. Arya Stark would have perhaps been disgusted by the white skin and unearthly taste for the living. Arya Stark is dead, or so they told her.

Arya Stark looks the Kindly Man in the face while Needle slips ice blue though his warm body and lays a cold cold kiss on his rotting forehead, watches the bone turn to white turn to snow turn to dust, drink deeply from his self so that when he whisper to her ear she answers to his mind.

'Valor Morghulis'

'The dead don't die, stupid.'

(blood calls to blood calls to blood. arya dwells in the dark places of the world, one fleeting shadow at a time, reclaims her legacy with ice and vengeance. she leaves no footprints behind. she kills with frost tipped fingers and stalks whatever life-giving warmth awakens her appetite, makes her way on howling winds, and delights in the hunt.

the lone wolf does not die. It thrives, and waits for the pack to call it home)

 

 

 

**_IV_ **

_the prince that was not promised_

 

  
The Three Eyed Crow sees all this.

The lion queen is sheared and shamed in the south, and this he sees. The dragon mother travels ever closer, her children fly ever farther, and this he sees. A crow is pecked to death by it's like, and this it feels.

Once six children sat around an elder's chair as she wove tales of winter and demons, and these children grew not into Men and Women, but cold beings that walked in the shadows and wore armor of unbreakable ice. The Third Eye remembers the old hearthfire stories, while he spies on the shade of a girl with a dripping muzzle. There were stories of a queen of ice, colder than cold with a a colder heart still. This Three Eyed Crow knows to be true when more and more weirwood trees turn blue and bright-eyed.

A father told his pack of children about monsters that wore human pelts and sunk fangs of the mind in their prey. Now a young boy hunts wild and free with his litter mate, crushing mights and wills like so much snow.

The Third Eyed Crow sees all this. Most times he even understands it. He hops from tree to tree, borrows wings and brains and hands. There are threads in this war pulling to every other side. The Third Eye does not act -- _i'm not climbing I'm not flying i'm drifting in impossible airs_ \-- merely drops thoughts, finely worded questions, and instinct to flee here, an urge to explore a little bit deeper there. He destroys some, yes, but not as much as he protects. It is for the good of the pack, and the pack is the greatest good of all.

(there was a tale, a hearthfire tale, and it went like this:

there was once a stark brother, a black brother of the white wall, that took a white walker to wife, and from their union they begot children of night and ice. their children's children children hold their legacy in their bones, to be remembered when the great night covers the sky, and all that is living grows cold and withered dead.

and they shall be champions of the night, and ice their weapons and shadow their shields, and all shall tremble at their cold winter might.)

(it was a children's tale. it was a tale for the Children, to learn, and remember. the third eyed crow watches, remembers. it has been a long time since hearthfire had an effect on him. )

A black crow is pecked to death by it's like. He lays in the snow bed for a long time. One might wonder how long it would take for the cold to awaken his bones, freeze them solid.

A grey wolf howls, vindicated, and it's eyes are winter blue. Bran sinks his roots in the frozen ground, spreads his wings and smiles smiles smiles. A child's dimples, a monster's baring his teeth.

Over the cave with the woven throne dark sets in, with no sunrise in sight.

(there is an army at the edge of his forest. they do not dare enter where green things grow. a king walks to his throne. they do not know each other, and yet. their bones freeze the same.

'lord.' speaks the boy who once had a father whom he called my lord.

'nephew' greets the lord that once had a brother ha called my lord.

no steam rises from their mouths. their lips smile(snarl) mirror-like).

 

 

(what do you call the younger brother of a dead king if not king?)

 

 

 

**_III_ **

 

_the lone wolves_

 

  
High in the northern seas, where hungry storms prow the waters and even experienced sailors fear to thread, rises an island like a fist. The stone is granite, the woods bare as finely boned fingers. All the pines are naked of needles and weighted with snow. Here the wind reigns uncontested; here all sound, yells and whispers and songs are swallowed by the howling sound. The only sounds that carries is a wolf's laugh, a child's howling.

Here, the old gods sate their hunger. The young ones do as well, though they are more demon than gods.

Here, a sound - the crushing of snow, a sniffling nose. There, a flash of bloodied fur, fire-kissed hair never touched by fire. Warmth and light bows and dims in the cold places of the world.

The wolf smiles. They run through the black woods, six paws that leave no trail in the frost. Theirs is the hunt, the wild chase. Everyday the hunt, the hunger that never rests. It had been a long time since animal meat had been enough to sate it, longer still since the dark had clouded their eyes.

Raised neck hairs, flared nostrils, a shadow where there is no shade. Then death. If the meal is cold they do not feel it, do not feel anything but the warmth.

(there was once a woman. she had had a name to go with her warm hands and voice like stone between toes. she had been with them for a long long time, for very very far. she had taken care of the hunger, before.

before--

before they had forgotten her name)

  
It is winter. Night hoards upon the corner of the world, encroaching on shivering blue skies. It is winter.

The trees have eyes see far, farther than eyes can see. They have faces, bones that swing in the wind. They watch the boy that is the wolf that is the storm ravage the island, delight in the fury of his cold winds. 

  _These ones_ , they say in old old tongues, _these ones are the storm, the stillness before the blizzard_. _They are the cold that kills, the cold that lasts. they are ours ours ours._

(they are young and alone. they do not have long memories. grey walks once rose high in their dreams. now it is long white plains that heat their nights, mountains cold enough to hold the stars.

they are young and so they do it grieve, do not understand what they long for. hunger is all they know.

they had names, once. hadn't they?

they did. the wind shouts them, too loud to be drowned out, too loud not to remember. they remember. )

  
The sea freezes, thickens. The wolf treads on it without fear, boy riding at its back. the wind howls and he howls back, louder and fiercer. The call home is answered one red footprint on ice at a time

 

 

**_II_ **

  
_the white maiden_

 

She's a lovely sight, so very lovely.

Frost woven in a stark white cloak, fine threads stronger than any armor falling down her back. White her skin, white the net of frozen beads that might have once been filled with violet liquid. They are empty now, and rest diamond bright amongst red red hair.

Even her gown is white and hemmed with blue frost, embroidered with scenes of hunt and winter. More than half of it is covered by long tresses the color of blood seeping through virgin snow. She wear no veil nor hood, for the White Maiden needs no shield, no knight. Winter is her father, winter is her husband, winter loves her.

The cold falls everywhere, settles deeply in ever growing nights, yet no place south of the Neck fell to the cold faster than the Eyrie. Above Sky and Stone and Snow she dwelled for many cold moons, the last living thing in a dozen miles and more, if one would call her living. The young lord's household is hers now, a hundred or so blindly loyal demons that stagger and obey and never breathe.

Her father counts among them. The wretchedest wight of all, the very first to turn to ice as well. The Maiden turned him one windy night, when one too many liberties led her to lay her fingers over his heart. The cold burned through them, ate away at the flesh beneath, froze the blood and froze the brain of one who though himself canniest of all.

Now the White Maiden lounges on the Arryn throne of white and blue marble, every surface etched in frost, and delights in watching her ice-and-hunger beasts tear him apart again and again. Every time, she will smile with red red lips and raise pale pale hands, and the demons will paddle to her meekly, allow her to lick the blood out of their fur. The Maiden loves none better than her sweet winter-wolves. Only when her pets are delightfully clean again will her puppet's limbs be sewn together, further bound to her will with every game.

(glass, ivory, steel: these are human things, man made and pretty in the light, as all fragile things are. 

woman-made frost isn't fragile, but oh it's so _pretty_ )

This fate she disperses upon her foes as well. She keeps only the loyal awake; only the women and children live, and those she guards well in homes of ice and felts, subjects mad with fearsome love for her every deed. Her army grows as winter sets in her claws and spreads her breaths of hail and snow. One fell morn of dusky light she rises from her throne, marches South, South and further South, and that is the last morn of all.

The soldiers walk on foot unnaturally fast, made dumb to every pain and so unstoppable. Ahead the White Maiden rides on her favored winter-wolf, the one they call Queen. She conquers prettily, as she does all things - in the barren fields she weaves palaces out of frost, delicate spires decorated with deadly spikes that rise higher than the gulls fly; raises whole wolf packs out of snowdrifts, and even as her wights and winds and callousless fingers pass trough the Vale and the Stormlords, clutch the green youthful Reach, her hunger only grows.

And yet. And yet the White Maiden never turns North. A lady must needs be demure, after all. She waits, instead. Cleans her red dripping mouth on daily snowflake handkerchiefs, smiles often and sweetly. But it is said (it is whispered by shivering men, the last of the last huddling around a dwindling fire) that the eyes of the White Maiden only glint lantern-bright, ice-blue alight when the northern wind blows.

 

 

 

**_I_ **

_the black brother_

 

  
There was a boy and he was killed by men, by Man. There was a wolf and his fur was white and his eyes were the color of the things that watch through the trees. There was a castle the color of cloaks the color of vows. There was a snowdrift that was cold and a body that was colder, colder than snow.

(blue roses grow on a wall taller than the world. a blizzard rages from the north-side, freezes them to the steam. Their veins glimmer in the waning light, dew like tears on petal-cheeks.)

Close by the mute wolf howled at the moonless night. It was the sound of bones freezing together.

The boy was a boy was a man was a wolf was dead. Death was red on white like his bones, like his life. His skin was pale as snow, his hair crow-feathers dark.

He opens his eyes.  
.

.

  
. 

  
**_0_ **

(winter has come)


End file.
